"Sonya."
Virgil snickered. "Oh, yeah, I remember this. Sonya who?"
"Sonya shanty in o-old shanty town. Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Slagle."
"Slagle who?"
Charity crooned: "Slagles ri-i-ing, are ya listenin'? . . . Now I got a hard one for you. What is two hundred feet long, green, with warts all over, and sleeps at the bottom of the ocean?"
Not ready for any of this, Virgil Bassett pulled nervously at an earlobe. "Warts and what?"
"Give up?" she brimmed.
"Hell yes."
"Moby Pickle! Got another," Charity threatened, definitely on a roll. "What's purple, wears a Scout hat and stamps out forest fires?"
Virgil foundered and went down. "Nothing is - "
"That's what you think." Charity zoomed off the futon, pirouetted and broadcast the answer to a cosmos agog. "SMOKEY THE GRAPE!"
Virgil gaped, trying to understand and failing. "That's dumb."
"Got a big fat headline for ya, Virg: so are we."
Dizzy all of a sudden, sight blurred, Charity wove on her feet. What . . . what's happening to me?
"Char-i-tee?"
In the process of pulling at his ear, Virgil Bassett became a still life. All sound ceased. Charity stood like a last survivor, able to hear and move in a vacuum. "What's - ?"
"Charity?"
The voice was just down the hall, coming toward her room.
She knew who it was now.
Charity Stovall appeared in the doorway, waving casually to Charity Stovall. "Girl, you have been hell to catch up with."
Herself to every feature - clothes, hair, probably the fillings in her back teeth, yet with a subtle difference. Identical lines but each one more relaxed from head to toe and more clearly defined, the facial expression quite changed. Charity II saw everything she looked at but didn't put labels on it.
"Hi." She plopped down on the futon. "Surprised it's me?"
"Not a whole lot," Charity supposed after honest reflection. "Way things happen around here. Well, I look pretty good."
"Thanks." Charity II inspected the petrified Bassett. "Customer?"
"Mr. Bassett. Champion kite maker of Myrtle Beach, but he never got much time for it."
"Let me guess," Charity II divined. "When he flew the kite, he worried about keeping his job. On the job he dreamed about kites."
"That's about it."
"Never met himself coming or going. But we have. Let's work together, Char. We're better as a team."
"Weren't we always?"
"Gol-lee no." Charity II stretched her legs and crossed her arms, a disconcerting double image making herself at home. "Not in Plattsville, for sure not with Roy Stride. Not until just this moment, girl. We're not exactly each other. You're what I used to be. I'm what you could be. No big deal, just playing with a full deck, and didn't you run me ragged catching up."
"You know?" Charity said thoughtfully. "Like Leon says, you are by God right. I was just thinking - "
"I know, hon. That's why I'm finally here."
"Just listening to Virgil go on about his job and his miseries when he can do whatever he likes anytime he wants. And then . . . hell, I said, so can I. Elvira told me and told me."
"Doesn't count until you tell you," said her vibrant counter-part. "Lordy, but you were a case back in Plattsville. The resident Nice Girl on which the factory seal ain't been broke. Some virgin, Char: you screwed yourself for years, right up to five minutes ago." Charity II stood up, opening her arms for an embrace. "Gimme a hug, I've missed you."
Charity hesitated, a little wary. "You're not one of those actors, are you? There's a lot of them around."
"Guaranteed pure Stovall. C'mere."
Alone again. Or joined. Whatever, something very strange was happening to her mind. Pieces of it reaching to other pieces, straining to connect, one and one somehow making three. Charity squeezed her eyes shut and open again to clear the sudden blur. She remembered something without sense or reason. Water . . . leaning over a pool of water, her own flat, ugly face coming up in reflection to meet her - at first frightening but then so damn silly she had to laugh, though the effort hurt her throat.
She must have dreamed it before to recall the image in such detail. Someone was standing on the other side of the water, telling her about ... a gift? And for the gift, something paid or lost.
Charity's sight cleared. The ancient, fragile dream faded, leaving an afterimage, a bright flash still glowing behind her eyelids when she closed them, then . . . gone.
Charity looked down at the sleeping Virgil Bassett. She smiled at him. "We're in an absurd place doing ridiculous things." She bent close to the lost kite maker of Myrtle Beach, lulling him in the manner of a movie hypnotist. "You're deep asleep, Virg Bassett, but you can still hear me. When I say the magic1 word, you will leave this room and this whole dumb place, bag and baggage. Do you hear me, Virg?"
"Yes," he sighed in sleep. "I want to, but ..."
"But nothing. The magic word is fly. When I say fly, you will go Topside. Go directly Topside. Do not pass Go, do not collect any more bullshit. That includes your wife, who won't care anyway. You got better things to do."
Virgil drowsed; his lips relaxed into an unaccustomed grin. "Cer'nly do."
"Wake up, Virg."
He woke feeling utterly marvelous, as if a light had gone on inside him. Charity was very close and - Je-sus! - ten times more beautiful than when he dozed off. And while Virgil rubbed his eyes and tried to put it all together, Charity bestowed on him the most thoroughly feminine and satisfying kiss of his bereft existence.
"Virgil Bassett," she whispered tenderly, "go fly a kite."
30 - Barion explains; it doesn't help
"Post-life energy. We're in the thick of it." Maj removed the tiny earplug that emitted a cacophony of human speech. "All my readings are unreliable. What is that madness out there?"